Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes Part 2

_From the_ WESTERN DAILY PRESS, _Sept. 15th_, 1903.

A SWIM ROUND MONT ST. MICHAEL, NORMANDY.

Sir,--On August 22nd, at 5 p.m., on August 28th, at 9 a.m., and on August 29th, at 10 a.m., I achieved in a more successful measure than had hitherto been accomplished the problem of swimming round Mont St. Michael, Normandy, at high water. Previously acquainted with the certainty that an adverse current would at one point or another be met, I pre-arranged, and made three bold attempts, and by going in a certain direction, met with the greatest success at the first essay.

The tides that rise and flow against the base of the mount are more insidious and taxing to strike against than those which encircle the Mount of St. Michael, in Cornwall; but then the quality of the sea must be more pure and far more buoyant off the Cornish coast, and freshens to a greater extent the elastic movements of the swimmer. The sea, speaking from experience, does not hara.s.s one, swimming in the bay of St. Michael, Normandy, until the "retirage" is met; when all the force that can be exerted is necessarily called forth to prevent being seaward swept.

Yours faithfully,

J. ATWOOD.SLATER

Albi, Tarn, France,

_September 7th_, 1903.

_ARCHITECTURE._

_From the_ PATRIOTE ALBIGEOIS, _Sept. 29th,_ 1903.

Albigeois, vous qui pa.s.sez frequemment dans les rues adjacentes a votre cathedrale, n'avez-vous pas remarque la figure d'un artiste recemment installe, avec son chevalet, aupres du gigantesque monument et mettant toute la science technique de son art a le reproduire exactement.

C'est M. John ATWOOD.SLATER qui avait visite notre cite, il y a quelques annees, il avait alors dessine une belle perspective de Sainte-Cecile qu'il a exposee a l'Academie Royale de Londres. Il a admire la plupart des cathedrales gothiques de notre pays et, en fin connaisseur, il nous informe que nous possedons un des plus recherches specimens d'architecture qui existent en France. Quelques-unes de ces cathedrales sont a peine plus merveilleuses, mais il n'en est guere qui se pretent favorablement comme elle a l'esprit tranquille de devotion.

Maintenant pour le profit de ceux a qui cela pourrait faire plaisir M. John ATWOOD.SLATER, cet artist nous communique benevolement ce renseignegnement tres special: Il est encore fort nageur! C'est lui qui aux dates de 22, 28 et 29 aout a ete signale par la Normandie pour avoir fait a la nage le tour du Mont St. Michel: ce que personne jusqu'ici n'avait ose pretendre faire a cause des marees qui sont toujours tres contraires.--J.A.S.

UNPUBLISHED LETTERS.

_MUSIC._

_To the Editor of The Times, London._

Sir,--Whilst admitting the all-importance and the austere role of circ.u.mstance weighted with interest, and fused to an all-volatile point sufficient to write to you concerning, and always entering, freed from _schism_, the moot point, I beg leave to advance the suggestion that (with correct apposition of sentiment, already said) the moment has arrived for an improvement to be effected in the Hymnal, in the public offices of St. Paul's Cathedral employed.

For the furtherance of this important item of diocesan and divine service, "Hymns, Ancient and Modern," be it well known, has stood the crucial test of a number of years; while its mechanical characteristics have been demonstrated all the way along the metronome number of decades it has served to mollify and a.s.suage the griefs and pa.s.sions, and inspire the consciences of congregations using it habitually as a _vade mec.u.m_.

While believing in the sedate grandeur of its stereotyped orthodoxy, I powerfully plead, and in a tone of restraint, this prerogative: that the edition of hymns known as "The Hymnary," should upon examination be found to contain more agreeable, versatile value and fecundity of literary nutrition: honourably and scholastically capable of out-cla.s.sing the rival for whose displacement I plead; and competent at once to put yet better light with wholesomer sustenance and rarer spiritual food into the minds of its privileged students.

The ideas and principles conceived by the once editors and publishers of the volume whose richly bestraught merits I champion, and whose solemn rights I plead, (in the year 1871), was to place in society at once, all electrified, au premier coup canonized (armed at all points), a work which should at a moment be complete in law; self-contained and academically referable to the stringent junctures of an ecclesiastical, a national, and a polyphonetic tribunal: a work which should loyally attract the acclaim of co-existing literary hymnals, and ever would, it was reverently hoped--a sentiment which I, for one, favourably concur in--remain, the key-symbol of the Reformed, Anglican faith, with its near, true, and ever new ally--a note as high, silvery and jurisprudential; purified domestic co-partnership!

To further substantiate and enhance my devoutly expressed remarks, I confidently state that the compilation of "Hymns Ancient and Modern"

was not originally in fact the outcome of an individual movement, or yet of a moment. At periods diverse, and at stages various, it matured its conditional purpose by repeated acts of regeneration and reform, by keeping generally within the radius of a stereotyped policy of pruning and paring; which consolidated by degrees and swept it on to the confines and the platform of its national respectability.

Be it even tacitly acknowledged, in surveying the genesis of Hymnology that the function of revision has once been, a fact, applied to the "Hymns Ancient and Modern" since the appearance of "The Hymnary,"

in my estimation under a less searching eye than that which all impartially discriminated and directed, at one and at one time only, the laying together and the consolidating of the "particles predelix"

of this frankincense offering of the National Church; a work of cla.s.sic intent and aesthetic outcome. Personal labour designed it _purposely_ for the hearts of men, but not for their _faces_; a character which, Christian-like, it inseparably wears, like French martial music.

Herein exemplified to n.o.ble British hearts is a bulwark that at once completely puts to rout no inconsiderable amount of the mildew mould of "Hymns Ancient and Modern," while never so much as tarnishing or jeopardizing the aroma of its native asceticism.

Interested bibliophiles may peruse pleasantly the trenchant remarks launched by the editors, (of the work upheld) literary and musical; and examine for their predilection by turning its pages the a.n.a.lytical merit of its composer's names; all serious-minded men; capable lamp-bearers in the wide arcana of cla.s.sic music.

Stoical people do not know the wealth of chaste language stored up within the covers of "The Hymnary." A rare musician-poet is needed to resolve its pulpy flavour and discipline to the polemics of common life; whilst one, a connoisseur, would readily congratulate the sanguine, sensible, and all-seeing management, as regards to authors of words, indices of composers, indices of metres, metronome marks, which heralds and places it, in respect of completeness, ahead of all contemporaneous editions.

J. ATWOOD.SLATER,

_Medallist & Premium Holder of the Royal Academy of Arts, London._

4, Hill Side, Cotham Hill, Bristol,

_Epiphany, 1903._

_LITERATURE._

_To the Editor of_ THE BIRMINGHAM GAZETTE.

_March_, 1903.

Sir,--Touched by a virtuous sense that a n.o.ble writer has pa.s.sed from the central and celestial sphere of his vocation, and discharging the offices of respect voluntarily admitted as a literary admirer, with sympathy in a bruised state of liquefaction, I maintain that the season for uttering a few words is clearly at hand, and should be turned to the advantage of retrospect.

Being bred of a generation which has read, with a spirit attuned to the pleasant influences of an Academic and a Saracenic art, the writings of John Henry Shorthouse, and ever discovering them to contain philosophic importance and pyschologic expression decidedly above the astuteness and ability of average writers; and having usually in them remarked wisdom, council and knowledge reminiscent of the inspired logicial writers and divines of the law-given Testaments; in point of enquiry, I am summarily induced to champion the belief that the psychologic, emphatic style adopted by the writer, with the success in high quarters attendant the disposal of his works, has not, convincingness being the indicator, been reached, nor surpa.s.sed. The Warwickshire alchemist invariably throws across his scenes and to the centre, a glare, a strong ray, which burns to the water-line the barque of Agnosticism. This is tacitly recognised, concurrently and alternately traced in the selection of the phrases, and in the subtle or dramatic sense of the scene photographed; the second inspiration springing into immediate co-operation, linking to the first the thought by a magnetised hyphen, causes his symbolistic pictures to thrive gloriously, rapturously; the first touch of sensitized matter at times appearing grotesque, dimly lit, although never flimsy. This pedantic, pictorial, even scholarly system by our revered writer adopted, is bent, applied to meet extreme pa.s.ses of imaginative perfection and delicacy. The picture is navely introduced and obscurely, somewhat trenchantly elaborated, allows itself to be apologetically understood; whilst in succession the lower taste for animal sentiment is sorcerized by vivid flashes of captivating contrast, forked, as lightning, and left, as embers smouldering to glow in the crucible of memory's recesses. Specious instances of irony playing the manliest part: flashes of meteoric, mesmeric eloquence, fitfully flecking the embossed page, as one tier or set of ideas, in rhetoric orchestration, symphonizes with or eclipses another.

Connection, an element of robust mesmeric cohesion with this prized author being the adamantine hyphen, the articulating link, which compacts the roll. John Henry Shorthouse, the templar, the confessor of music, was, and concurrently, the apologist of philosophic light.

Engaged to a powerful mechanism of romantic dogma, the nett article of its creed; the neochromatic acoustic regalia of stage eloquence, the key, or longest recurrent note; the van or middle the next, the sinuous lever of stage discipline. After all, concurrently may it not, be said that this colour instinct aspect of cosmically conceived romanticism is never wilfully vulgarized. For its incomparable, iconographical purpose it exists, and is as intrinsically useful and serviceable to the scheme as the figures which admirably ill.u.s.trate the pictures of Hogarth and Holman Hunt. When introduced, music is rarely intended to edge itself into the important place of "first study." This in alchemy or personification being occupied by the circ.u.mstantial cruxes of life, philosophic morality, vested usually in courtly attire; I would not say abstract attire, for the clean-cut character it bears is too strictly defined (for the sake of that Artist's art) for such an impression to be born, or even to lurk by sentiment, there beneath.

The mould employed at all times is minutely fashioned, as a sculptor would, by investing his model with a code of spirituality, inspired with fire, which epicureanly endows fleeting emotion with a voice, and vitality lends also to distant-reaching invisible ends: hinting that the picturesque alchemy of music is potential too in reaching and touching the lower chords of animal pa.s.sion, where movement is rapid and light redundant. The breast of the thoughtful writer heaved ever to animal instincts without measure in extolling the complex phases of court, ecclesiastic, and domestic oligarchy. Statesmanship and subjunction rise and peacefully sink together, and in his magnetic touch, are made to harmoniously coalesce in the political balance.

Shorthouse the author, a believer in, a champion was of two-fold or dual cosmos: his colour sense being susceptible to and wrought upon in singular consular consistence with the effulgent dogmas of its creed, and in alliance with the spirit of the _cinque cento_ Italian Renaissance Schools of Painting and Architecture. Practically speaking, he conceived a train of adept ideas, at times fanciful, and at times morbid, transforming them adroitly by adept excursions of cross-lit introspection, accentuation, and by dint of manual caress, as the first of players upon stringed instruments.

Music, I would apologetically infer, being the middle, the rallying feature, of Mr. J.H. Shorthouse's verbose apology. If fictionizing in prose, he writes with brief orange-hued flashes of liquid ether; each of short, all but, brief span. Characteristically, he belongs to the same school and unapproachable law as the French organist-composer, C.M. Widor: stringent, petulant observance of free uncurbed metronome time, allied to picturesque handling; punctuality of tidal consort rigidly regarding, when each, the one to the other, linked; less a care, by virtuous intuition displaying for lyric measure. The writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne more forcibly and piquantly evince cylindrical flow, and strike at the object lesson with less artificial, _cadavre_, fastidious touch; but Mr. Shorthouse, speaking strictly, as to temper and _tempo_ is a trifle more rugged; and never a shadow of suspense suffered he to stir a hand's breadth, that is, rest 'twixt poetic certainty and doubt, lest the ultimate end should all-attainable be or not. For freedom from this, and other literary ambiguity, yet never manifesting anxiety of freeing himself in prose from its insidious and arbitrary restraint, I attribute his tragical, subtle, gentle power of "connection," _liaison_; feeling for time; planetary time, be it lunar time, sometimes unmistakably, solar time; disallowing, by potency of sentimental touch, a sense of rupture, to linger. A n.o.ble stream by mute comparison, pursuing its course unwavering; interrupted but now and again, to the vast expansive ocean of shapeliness, of unity.

J. ATWOOD.SLATER,

_Premium Holder & Medallist of the Royal Academy of Arts, London._

Hill Side, Cotham Hill, Bristol.